Reclaiming Appalachia: A Push to Bring Back Native Forests to Coal Country

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Previous efforts to restore former coal mine sites in Appalachia have left behind vast swaths of unproductive land. Now, a group of nonprofits and scientists are working to restore native trees to the region — even if it means starting the reclamation process from scratch.

Author: Elizabeth McGowan | Published: December 14, 2017

Near the top of Cheat Mountain in West Virginia, bulldozer operator Bill Moore gazes down a steep slope littered with toppled conifers. Tangled roots and angled boulders protrude from the slate-colored soil, and the earth is crisscrossed with deep gouges.

“Anywhere else I’ve ever worked,” Moore says, “if I did what I did here, I’d be fired.”

Moore is working for Green Forests Work, a small nonprofit, as part of a project to rehabilitate a rare red spruce-dominant forest on 2,000 acres that were mined for coal in the 1970s and 1980s. The mine became part of the Monongahela National Forest in 1989 when the U.S. Forest Service purchased more than 40,000 contiguous acres known as the Mower Tract.

Moore and other bulldozer operators hired by the nonprofit first knock down non-native Norway spruce and undesirable red pine. Then they score the heavily compacted dirt with three-foot-long steel blades; openings formed by this “deep ripping” allow newly planted native saplings, shrubs, and flowering plants to take root and thrive. The downed trees are left in place to curb erosion, build soil, and provide brushy habitat for birds and mammals.    

“Ripping so deep might seem extreme, but it’s the only way to give these native trees a chance,” says Chris Barton, co-founder of Green Forests Work and a professor at the University of Kentucky who specializes in forest hydrology and watershed management. “What’s on top of this mine site isn’t soil. It’s the spoil created when rock was blown up to expose the coal seam, and it’s really compacted.”

Such aggressive bulldozing is part of a new and evolving approach to healing forests destroyed by decades of surface coal mining in Appalachia, from Alabama to Pennsylvania. These lands were supposed to have been reclaimed in recent decades under the 1977 federal Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act. But scientists and conservationists say that many of those reclamation efforts were failed or half-hearted efforts that did little more than throw dirt, mining debris, grass, and non-native trees over scarred lands.

Now, Green Forests Work and other groups are attempting ecological do-overs with the aim of restoring native forests on large swaths of previously reclaimed public and private lands throughout Appalachia. The deep-ripping technique developed by Barton, with support from a team of other scientists, involves uprooting the non-native trees and grasses planted by coal companies and starting the entire land restoration process from scratch.

At 2,000 acres, Cheat Mountain is Green Forests Work’s largest undertaking since it began operating as a nonprofit in 2013. Barton has partnered with public and private funders to coordinate the planting of more than 2 million trees on 3,300-plus acres in Appalachia. Other former mining sites that it is tackling include a 130-acre plot within the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pa., the former mine site where one of the four hijacked planes crashed on Sept. 11, 2001; a 110-acre site near Fishtrap Lake in Pike County, Ky.; and a 86-acre area within the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area in eastern Ohio. These and other planned restoration sites are part of an estimated 1 million acres that the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) has designated as legacy coal mine sites.

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Fast-Fashion’s Environmentally Destructive Habits

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Author: Sophie Linden | Published: December 7, 2017

Style has its hazards. From credit card debt to painfully high heels, many trends have proven the idea that fashion comes at a cost. Each decade of outfits has a concerning global impact. Now, a recent study from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation illuminates the incomprehensible toll fashion takes on the climate.

Done in collaboration with animal-welfare advocate and high-end clothing designer Stella McCartney, the Macarthur study tracks the environmental devastations incurred through the production of next season’s wares.

The study calls this fashion’s tendency to “take-make-and-dispose,” also known as fast fashion. It’s an obsession with new style wherein unworn clothing is quickly turned over, and a garbage truck’s worth of fashion is thrown away every second of the year. If the industry keeps up like this, by 2050, textiles and garments will account for a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.

It’s also estimated that half a million tons of plastic microfibers are leaked into earth’s oceans each year, as synthetic materials are laundered and microparticles of plastic eventually travel into the ocean. This is the equivalent of 50 billion plastic water bottles, contributing to a health crisis for sea animals, which are ingesting plastics as if they were plankton.  

In order to remedy the heavy-handed consequences of fast fashion, the foundation has offered a four-part approach: asking stakeholders to phase out the use of hazardous materials, improve the recycling of old fabrics, use renewable resources in manufacturing, and increase the quality of goods it sells.

The authors envision creating a “new textile economy,” though it is worth noting that some corporate entities are already changing their business practices with climate change in mind.

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Are Your Favorite Jeans Part of the Climate Problem?

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Clothing companies might be ignoring as much as 90 percent of the climate pollution they generate.

Author: Hannah Lownsbrough | Published: December 7, 2017

As the fashion industry prepares for the holiday season, many high-profile brands will pump out new trends and products faster than ever before. All too often, however, that business helps drive severe damage to our global climate due to the fashion industry’s extraordinarily high levels of pollution. As 2017 draws to close, the fashion industry must step up to the challenge and redeem their terrible track record by reducing carbon emissions. The first step is simple: companies must open their record books and allow for more accurate calculations on the environmental impact of their production methods and subsequent climate impact.

Sadly, instead of increased transparency and commitments, fashion CEOs are hiding behind greenwashed PR campaigns, like the disappointing announcement made by Levi’s, Gap, Guess, Wrangler, and Lee at a New York climate week event this past autumn. CEOs of the world’s famous denim brands said they would announce climate targets in two years, a deadline far longer than necessary to complete a basic step. While these CEOs continue to delay the climate commitment process, denim supply chains are continuing to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without recourse.

Denim and clothing companies will do all that they can to fudge the link between their brands and the realities of greenhouse gas emissions. According to reports from the Carbon Disclosure Project, companies within the fashion sector might be ignoring as much as 90 percent of the climate pollution they generate. Like too many industries before them, the fashion industry is attempting to solve the problem of its own emissions by outsourcing production to contractors in countries with less strict emissions regulations, namely China or Bangladesh. But despite the ostensible attractiveness of these short-term solutions, the long-term consequences could be catastrophic. These businesses can no longer afford to look away from the climate legacy they will leave behind.

Right now, the clothing and accessories industry is a huge contributor to global climate change. According to one study, the industry generates about 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, roughly equal to the pollution created by putting 163 million new passenger cars on the road. A study by a leading clothing company concluded that one pair of denim jeans produces 44 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to driving a car almost 48 miles or burning over 21 pounds of coal. Manufacturing a single pair of denim jeans produces 44 pounds of CO2, roughly equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from driving a passenger car nearly 50 miles.

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How Does Organic Mitigate Climate Change? Webinar

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[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xswj8-7ECoU[/embedyt]
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF

Nigeria Pledges to Restore Nearly 10 Million Acres of Degraded Land

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Author: Mike Gaworecki | Published: December 7, 2017

The government of Nigeria has announced its plans to restore four million hectares, or nearly 10 million acres, of degraded lands within its borders.

The West African nation is now one of 26 countries across the continent that have committed to restoring more than 84 million hectares (over 200 million acres) of degraded lands as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), an effort that aims to bring 100 million hectares of land under restoration by 2030. These commitments also support the targets of the Bonn Challenge, a global initiative to restore 150 million hectares by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030.

Nigeria’s economy is the largest in Africa, but deforestation has become widespread amidst the country’s rapid pace of urban development and population growth.

“Nigeria is happy to be associated with the AFR100 initiative and Bonn Challenge. We are committed to restoring degraded forests to improve citizens’ livelihoods through food security, poverty alleviation, a sustainable environment and the achievement of the [UN] Sustainable Development Goals,” Bananda Aliyu, the director of the Drought and Desertification Amelioration Department at Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment, said in a statement.

“Our government understands the environmental benefits of restoring degraded forest landscapes and hopes to meet its Nationally Determined Contributions, Land Degradation Neutrality targets and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan of Nigeria.”

Climate mitigation efforts around land use, land-use change, and forestry are included in 83 percent of the climate action plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), submitted by each of the 189 countries that signed the Paris Climate Agreement.

Recent research has found that “natural climate solutions” — defined as “conservation, restoration, and/or improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands” — have huge potential to help meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming in this century to two degrees Celsius or less. The restoration of degraded forests and other landscapes was found to have the most climate mitigation potential of the 20 natural climate strategies examined for the study.

While there’s an abundance of research showing its environmental and climate benefits, restoration is increasingly coming to be seen as a good investment, as well. Close to $1.5 billion in financial commitments have been made to AFR100 initiatives, for instance. And more than $2 billion in private investment funds have been committed to restoration projects in the Caribbean and Latin America through Initiative 20×20, a country-led effort similar to AFR100 through which 16 nations have committed to restoring 53.2 million hectares of land.

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Dirt Shirts and SITO: Promoting Organic Apparel and Eco-Friendly Fashion

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Author: Dr. Joseph Mercola | Published: December 12, 2017

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLtnyKE5iXE[/embedyt]

When was the last time you considered what your clothes were made of? If you’re like most people, you may not realize how important organic clothing is, or why. In this interview, Marci Zaroff,1 founder of the first organically certified textile mill in the U.S., will help enlighten us about the merits of organic fashion.

Her facility is certified to the most prestigious organic certification, the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), and Marci, known in the fashion industry as an “ecopreneur” and “green fashionista,” has played a major role in promoting ecologically-friendly clothing that is anything but drab. In fact, Marci was the one who coined the term “eco-fashion.”

She’s been working as a consultant for us for several years now, helping us create our own line of GOTS certified organic cotton mattresses, organic bed sheets and towels. The issue of organic clothing was something I neglected for years, but after gaining an understanding of the global implications of how fabrics and dyes are made, I felt compelled to take action.

I am very proud to support the organic cotton farmers by adding a full line of high-quality organic clothing to my online shop. These products are very durable and built to last, while remaining extremely soft to the touch. Organic clothing can vary in quality as some products are quite thin and can wear out quickly. These products are made to last to stop the destructive cycle of fast fashion.

You can now find everything from socks and underwear to men’s, women’s and kids’ organic, GOTS-certified T-shirts. The Dirt Shirts are made from cotton grown in Texas and manufactured in North Caroline and Virginia. I will be donating profits from these Dirt Shirts to the Organic Consumers Association to develop projects supporting regenerative agriculture, such as regeneratively produced wool and cotton.

I am personally wearing GOTS certified organic clothing whenever possible, and without any unnatural dyes, as described in my interview with Rebecca Burgess. I know this may be a challenge for many, but the simple first step you can take is making sure your underwear is organic GOTS certified and free of chemical dyes, which is why I am so excited to have the opportunity to use this as my primary underwear.

Fast Fashion Versus Eco-Fashion

In a world of “fast fashion,” where garments are increasingly being treated as single-use items and styles change faster than the seasons, Marci’s ideology is to fashion what the slow-food movement is to food.

“[F]ast fashion has … proliferated to the point where 20 percent of the world’s fresh water pollution is coming from the fashion industry. The fashion industry is actually the second largest polluter in the world …

While people think ‘cheaper, faster, more’ is a good thing, where there’s 52 seasons a year and lots of choice, at what expense does that come? Well, serious human and environmental impacts come from that. Ten percent of the world’s carbon impact and 3 trillion gallons of fresh water are being used each year for fashion. Then there are the social ramifications,” Marci says.

Marci has been in this business since the 1990s. With a background in food and beauty, she was able to connect the dots and translate everything she’d learned about food and beauty to fashion, textiles and fiber.

“I saw fashion as a very significant vehicle for transformation, because people love fashion. It’s a powerful vehicle … I started a brand in 1995 called Under the Canopy, which was the first organic fashion and home lifestyle brand.

We went direct to consumer for eight years while I was raising my kids, and then launched as the category captain for Whole Foods markets, a 2,000-square foot Under the Canopy store-in-store, and grew that significantly through the years, [to] where we launched the first organic textiles for Target, Macy’s and a number of other retailers.”

But Marci’s vision kept growing. Ultimately, she realized she wanted to be a solution provider and create a way to make sustainable and organic fashion easy for other brands and retailers. She envisioned creating a platform others could confidently use. And that’s what she has created — a fully transparent and traceable supply chain for organic cotton apparel, accessories and home textiles.

From Degeneration to Regeneration

In the video, you’ll see both Marci and I are wearing our “Dirt Shirts,” made from 100 percent organically grown cotton. Notice this is not just 100 percent cotton, a virtually meaningless label. It’s 100 percent ORGANIC cotton. These T-shirts are made from organic cotton grown in Texas by an incredible organic cotton farmer co-op, and all of the manufacturing takes place in the U.S. If you’ve never had the opportunity to wear one, I can tell you it’s the softest material imaginable, almost like cashmere.

Best of all, it’s sustainable, and contributes to the regeneration rather than the degeneration of our environment. These shirts are now available for purchase, and all Dirt Shirt proceeds will be donated to an educational project to expand awareness of the benefits of organic cotton.

“It’s amazing to be a part of the solution. Conventional agriculture has gotten out of control. Cotton farmers, domestically and abroad, are really struggling in the cotton industry from the overuse of chemicals in their farming methods and how expensive those methods have become,” Marci says.

“Ultimately, it’s very hard for those farmers to sustain their livelihoods, not to mention the fact that cotton represents less than 3 percent of the world’s agriculture but uses somewhere around 20 percent of the most harmful insecticides, and up to 10 percent of the most toxic pesticides. Over 90 percent of cotton is currently genetically modified.

When you look at organic T-shirts and organic clothing, to me it has always been about no compromise, breaking the stigma that you have to give up style, quality, fit, color, comfort — which you don’t. On the contrary, when you feel how pure this is and how soft it is, it’s because chemicals haven’t broken down the fibers. Secondly, you can be really smart in how you source …

A typical garment in a supply chain can change hands seven to 10 times. When I started my first company in organic clothing, I went straight to the farmers. There was no supply chain. I had to build [that] up, which meant I could be more efficient, I could cut out a lot of those markups and middlemen, and add value to the product and ultimately offer a product that is not less, it’s more.”

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A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future

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Published: November 28, 2017

Fashion is a vibrant industry that employs hundreds of millions, generates significant revenues, and touches almost everyone, everywhere. Since the 20th century, clothing has increasingly been considered as disposable, and the industry has become highly globalised, with garments often designed in one country, manufactured in another and sold worldwide at an ever-increasing pace. This trend has been further accentuated over the past 15 years by rising demand from a growing middle class across the globe with higher disposable income, and the emergence of the ‘fast fashion’ phenomenon, leading to a doubling in production over the same period. 

The time has come to transition to a textile system that delivers better economic, societal, and environmental outcomes. The report A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future outlines a vision and sets out ambitions and actions – based on the principles of a circular economy – to design out negative impacts and capture a USD 500 billion economic opportunity by truly transforming the way clothes are designed, sold, and used.

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Sikkim: An Organic Vision Becomes Reality

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Author: Karin Heinze | Published: May 12, 2017

Sikkim, a small northeastern Himalayan state between Nepal and Bhutan that boarders China in the North, made an important decision in 2010. Chief Minister Sri Pawan Chamling had a visionary goal: he wanted to place the state’s entire agriculture land under organic management. To achieve his goal, Chamling launched the Sikkim Organic Mission and within 15 years, the entire agriculture process was converted to organic, and Sikkim was declared “Organic State“ in 2016. This is a worldwide lighthouse example for further conversion of lands towards a 100% organic status.

The former kingdom of Sikkim (from 1643-1975) is now an Indian state with a “glorious history of agriculture where people and nature lived in perfect harmony.“ (quoted from “Sikkim on the Organic Trail,” a government brochure). Although Sikkim’s population of only 600,000 people living within 7,100 square kilometers (2741 mi), the state enjoys a remarkable biodiversity, with 4,500 flowering plants and 500 species of butterflies, 28 mountain peaks, including Mt. Kangchendzonga, which is 8,586 m (28,169 ft) high, and more than 80 glaciers, 227 high-altitude lakes and 104 rivers. The climate ranges from pleasant weather conditions to tropical and cold alpine weather. Around 70% of the rural population, a multiethnic mix, depend upon agriculture and allied sectors.

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The Ground Beneath Our Feet

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Published: December 4, 2017

During a major soil catastrophe — the Dust Bowl — President Franklin Roosevelt told state governors, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”

Still, we treat our soil like dirt. By growing food and storing carbon dioxide and water, the loam and peat that coats the earth sustains us all. In return, we till it, treat it with chemicals and generally walk all over it.

Without healthy soil, food becomes less nutritious and crops become harder to grow. If the crops aren’t healthy, then the 70 percent of the world’s fresh water that’s used for agriculture will be wasted.

A 2012 study found that about a third of the planet’s topsoil is degraded and that without action, the world will be out of soil suitable for farming within 60 years.

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Why Fungi Rule the World

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While many people associate fungi with mushrooms alone, those familiar stems and caps are merely the fruit, like an apple on a tree. The real action is underground.

Author: Barbara Moran | Published: November 2016

alking through the woods with Jennifer Talbot (CAS’04) means seeing the forest with fresh eyes. But not the way you might think. Those tall, trembling pines stretching into the azure sky? Meh. The autumn sunlight dappling the canopy? Whatever.

The stick stippled with brown and white rot?

“Oh, YEAH!” shouts Talbot, stooping to grab the crumbly branch from the forest floor. She points to a cluster of gelatinous yellow blobs on the bark—a fungus called witches’ butter. “We used to think this was a slime mold, but it isn’t,” she says, pausing to admire the goo. “It’s actually edible, if you want to go there.”

For Talbot, all the action is underfoot. The assistant professor of biology studies a group of organisms called mycorrhizal fungi, which infect the root tips of over 90 percent of plant families on earth—in a good way. The fungi supply nutrients to the plants and get food in return. “The vast majority of plants you see outside could not live where they do without mycorrhizal fungi in the soil,” says Talbot.

Mycorrhizal fungi also have an outsize role in the decomposition of dead plants and the release of carbon. And since Earth’s soil contains more than three times as much carbon as its atmosphere, what fungi do in the soil could dramatically affect climate change. But nobody knows exactly how, and climate models are woefully fungus-free. Talbot, trained in analytical chemistry and working in biology, is particularly well positioned to fill this knowledge gap, and she’s using genetic sequencing, computer modeling, and ecosystem measurements to uncover fungi’s role. Kathleen Treseder, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine, and Talbot’s PhD advisor, says Talbot is “doing stuff that no one else can do.”

One conclusion: humans have underestimated the humble fungi. Not Talbot. As she puts it, “Mycorrhizal fungi are running the world.”

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